Cinque Torri Site Features

The towers themselves

Torre Grande is the largest and most climbed; the others rise around it. Watching climbers on them from the meadow costs nothing and is half the appeal.

The open-air war museum

Restored Italian trenches, timber walkways, shelters and gun positions, laid out on the ground they occupied and free to walk through.

The view to Lagazuoi

The Austrian line is visible across the valley -- the two positions read as one landscape, which is exactly how they were experienced.

Rifugio Scoiattoli and Rifugio Cinque Torri

Both minutes from the towers, with terraces facing the Tofane and the Averau.

The towers stand at roughly 2,250 metres on an open shelf between the Averau and Nuvolau above and the Falzarego valley below.

Unusually for the Dolomites, they are surrounded by alpine meadow rather than scree or forest, which is why they can be walked around and climbed with so little approach.

The rock is Dolomia, pale and heavily jointed -- the jointing being what let erosion cut the group into separate stacks in the first place, and what continues to bring pieces of it down.

The setting looks across to the Tofane to the north, the Lagazuoi and Marmolada to the west, and the Pelmo and Civetta to the south.